TORONTO — Don’t tell the Toronto International Film Festival, but it didn’t actually get the world première of François Girard’s Hochelaga, terre des âmes, Saturday night.

The film had a hometown, invite-only première at Place des Arts, on Wednesday, as well as a pair of public screenings at the Imperial. But again, shhh, not so loud.

“We’re trying to keep it quiet, here,” Girard said, sitting on a patio on the 17th floor of Toronto hotel, Saturday afternoon, hours before his film was to officially launch, in grand style, with a prestigious Gala screening at the festival.

“Let’s not talk too much about that,” he continued, referring to the Montreal sneak previews. “TIFF is very strict about their Gala screenings, but they understood. They were very supportive. Piers (Handling, TIFF’s outgoing president) being Piers, he understood the situation — we had to show it in Montreal first.”

Why? Because it’s a film about Montreal and, as the title suggests, about the very soul of our city. Just for Laughs founder Gilbert Rozon originally approached Girard looking for a filmic component to add to the city’s 375th anniversary celebrations. Both men got more than they bargained for.

Girard doesn’t do anything halfway. The director of high profile movies including 32 Short Films About Glenn Gould, The Red Violin, Silk and Boychoir has also directed New York’s Metropolitan Opera, works for theatre and shows by Cirque du Soleil.

“For unknown reasons, I’ve shot films everywhere in the world,” Girard said. “And whether in my films, opera or theatre, for some reason, I’ve never shown where I live — except in The Red Violin, but with Sam Jackson I wasn’t showing quintessential Montreal. There’s a moment where you feel a need to do that, and say, ‘This is where I live.’”

Hochelaga, terre des âmes doubles down on the fuss surrounding Montreal’s 375th, turning back the clock another 375 years to explore the pre-colonial history of the land on which the city was built.

Indigenous culture and history run through the film, from an imagined battle in the Iroquois village of Hochelaga in 1267, where an Iroquois prophet (Raoul Trujillo) looks into the future; to the other end of the timeline, as a sinkhole appears during a football game at Percival Molson Stadium, leading to an archaeological dig that finds Mohawk grad student Baptiste Asigny (rapper-actor Samian, who is half Algonquin) looking into the past.

“It’s a fantasy most of us have,” Girard said. “You’re on a street corner in London, wondering who was standing there 1,000 years before. From my loft in Montreal, I can see Mount Royal. I sometimes have the fantasy that 1,000, 2,000 or 3,000 years ago, somebody was in the same place, looking at the same mountain, the same sky, feeling the same winter. We have that connection by the land. That’s what the film talks about, looking at whoever has occupied that land, and then the connection between them.”

Jacques Cartier’s (Vincent Perez) initial meeting with the Iroquois in 1535 is recreated; as is a confrontation between Patriotes rebels and British soldiers in 1839; and a romance between a coureur de bois and an Iroquois woman, in 1650, leading to scenes at Montreal’s storied Hotel-Dieu hospital.

Girard conducted painstaking research for each era, meticulously reconstructing details, down to the particular variations of French being spoken at different times. He also consulted extensively with First Nations representatives.

“It will be nice to watch for Mohawks,” said Wahiakeron Gilbert, in a joint interview with Perez, Trujillo and Samian. Gilbert appears as an Iroquois chief in the Jacques Cartier scene, and translated all the Mohawk dialogue for the film.

“We’ve never had a movie where anybody spoke our language,” he continued. “I think our people will be proud. Maybe some will want to learn the language; this might give it a second life.”

“The beauty of this film is the authenticity,” Trujillo said. “He’s not romanticizing anybody, not even the French. Everyone is just human beings. We’re talking about the language, but the complexity of the film is astounding.”

Samian noted the importance of the fact that, “finally someone dares, someone of François status, dares to make a film on First Nations and on Hochelaga.”

Girard didn’t set out to tell a story with a strong Indigenous presence, he explained, but when he began to consider looking into the history of Montreal, he simply couldn’t avoid it.

“I started doing research and reading John Ralston Saul’s The Comeback, and A Fair Country,” he said. “I think collectively, intellectually, everybody is at the point where we need to reconnect with our native roots. … If you’re looking at who we are and where we come from, you can’t escape looking at First Nations.”

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